


you're all that's warm, in my restless heart

by boxerzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, ITS CUTE AND FLUFFY THOUGH TOO, M/M, Summer Romance, i didn't wanna put niall among the characters bc hes mentioned like once, like all they do is hang around and watch the stars and swim and eat peaches, louis is described as golden alot and harry is in love, sorry for the angst srsly i could have toned it down, uppercase letters YAY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:33:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxerzayn/pseuds/boxerzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Harry’s going to blow up like a bomb, a bomb of poetry scattered into the sky and of sand and fuzzy purple wine, and it’s going to be glorious.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're all that's warm, in my restless heart

**Author's Note:**

> there's a lot of poetry in here, written by myself and other ppl and i couldnt possibly mention everything. title from passengers 'feather on the clyde'.
> 
> im happy how this turned out, that it was a bit longer and stuff lmao ok thanks

 

 

 

 

 

 

“One day, tens of millions of years from now,

someone will find me rusted into the mud of a world they have never seen,

and when they crumble me between their fingers,

it will be you they find.”

 

— Jeanette Winterson, the stone gods

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Harry wrote a poem about how Louis is like a hurricane one night but he scribbled over it in the morning.

Part because it’s cheesy and cliché to use the word hurricane, part because Louis could knock out the whole world and a storm can only paralyze one town.

It would be dumb to compare the shivers up Harry's spine to lightning because lightnings kill people every year; dumb to compare Louis’ eyes to the thick oil paint blue the sky turns into during a thunderstorm, because it’s only a matter of hours until it’s an inhuman morning yellow.

Louis is so much that Harry can’t fathom, and maybe that’s why he wrote about him as a thunderstorm in the first place, because he’s frightening like one. He’s gone as fast as he came, and he rushes over to Harry with kisses and laughs and words that burn Harry down in one flame, leaves him shallow-breathing like the warm haze in the air after a hurricane has calmed down.

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

It's summer the first time they meet and Harry sort of by accident, stumbles onto the beach with his cousin and doesn’t expect to stay long.

But there is Louis, the bonfire making his cheekbones shine like swords being smide.

He pushes a beer into Harry's hand and offers him a smile and every laugh Harry squeezed out of the bright, scary older boy, feels like golden coins in his chest.

It's Louis idea, to sneak away from the sputter and heat of the fire, sweat sticking a couple strands of hair to his forehead.

The words echo in Harry's mind; _gold, gold, gold, sharp, sharp, sharp._

Louis looks different, lying on the beach under the sky, a couple hundred yards away from the bonfire and all of the other teenagers. Softer, maybe, quieter.

His words are kind, and even though he’s all sharp bones and nose and eyes, he’s soft, he is. Looks almost breakable like a twig, under the stars like this, skin a quieter color than from above the fire.

 

(Harry had forgotten that with a twig you can poke someone’s eye out and leave them bleeding)

 

 

They talk, somewhat hushed even though there’s no chance anybody noticed they’ve snuck away let alone can hear what they’re saying.

“Have you ever been dunk before?” Louis asks, smiling towards Harry, and the hum in his stomach feels orange and purple and, “no.” he squeaks.

Louis laughs, and he’s so brutal like this, he just laughs, just _does_.

“When I was sixteen, Harry, I had been drinkin’ and smokin’ for three years.”

Harry looks at him with a hint of concern at that, wonders what Louis has done before this night in his life really, why his eyes are all those different colors of blue.

He wonders what Louis has been up to, all the afternoons when Harry has been sat with homework, or who Louis has kissed when Harry's been eating dinner with his mother, and if maybe all of the things they both have done, in their lives, has all been leading up to this.

Louis quietens, looks at him like he knows a secret, and he does, Harry thinks.

Louis knows a thousand secrets, everything he has ever done is a secret Harry wants to know, but Louis just keeps smiling as if he knows what he’s doing.

(He probably does. that’s what makes him so frightening.)

 

They talk for hours, and Harry thinks he’s locking up a door to a secret every time Louis tells him something (although really he’s unlocking a death trap with each question.)

Louis’ eyes get a softer blue color when he speaks of his little sisters, and Harry's never been the type to notice things like that. But. Yeah.

 

Louis looks at his golden watch. Harry likes to think he earned it but he most likely did steal it somewhere. “Isn’t it past your curfew, curly?”

Harry giggles into the sweet curve of Louis’ neck he doesn’t know well enough yet; “Yeah, probably should go home.”

“I’ll drive you,” Louis mumbles, and it sounds like that cheese with honey on top, that Harry's mother makes, tastes. Harry thinks it’s probably not very safe, to get in the car, with the two of them having shared the bottle of wine between them and all, but, like.

 

Harry sees it in front of him; going back home, his mother combing his hair wet and cutting it with the iron scissors in the kitchen, and watching Gemma put on her red lipstick before going out and knowing what it’s _like_ , the purple buzz in your stomach. He sees his lonely self when he’ll be baking with his stepfather, and he can feel the longing in his bones for Louis’ golden skin, can _feel_ how it’s going to itch under his fingernails.

He needs these last minutes with Louis, even if it isn’t a very good idea to sit in a car with someone that drunk.

“Well, c’mon then, Harry Styles.” Louis goes on, and they get up from the cold sand.

Harry shrugs of the yellow vest he borrowed when he was cold a bit earlier. He’d said no first, but Louis had insisted and also, he’d looked like the bloody sun, and like, a sun can’t freeze?

(They can) (Sometimes they need to run away too to keep from dying out)

The smell of Louis lingers on him still, he can feel it, but it doesn’t feel like a prison around his chest, he doesn’t want to be free.

Louis messes up his hair, and they laugh.

Harry’s still buzzing with the alcohol and the languid looks they’ve been exchanging, and he slurs out, “will I meet you again, Louis?” into the night. He realizes he doesn’t know Louis’ surname, but he doesn’t want to ask.

“‘Course,” Louis says, and he beams like it’s a prize, like his time is the golden trophy. (It is, it always is.) “‘Course, Harold.”

And Harry doesn’t know if Louis is just teasing of if he has drunkenly forgotten his name because that would hurt his feelings a bit.

 

(See, Harry’s only known Louis for one night and he would still forget his own name if it meant remembering Louis’)

 

They walk up along the beach, not going to close to the water but letting their feet -- Louis’ barefoot ones and Harry’s leather-clad ones -- sink into the wet sand. They climb over rocks and Louis almost falls. Harry sees in front of his scared eyes what Louis would look like, all bloody and hurt and all he can think of is that he’d rather it be his blood, before he snaps back into the hazy reality he still is in.

Some of Louis' friends shout goodbye to him as they pass the bonfire, and Harry remembers that he doesn’t know where his cousin is now. He finds himself caring very little and it’s almost sad.

 

(This whole evening is like that, golden but almost sad, because Harry knows so little.)

 

Louis’ car is white, he says, although Harry claims it looks quite grey. Maybe it’s just the dim night light and the dirt on it. It seems as if the smell of tobacco has almost sipped into the leather seats for good, but it’s a nice car. It’s a bit cold, but Louis puts his hand on Harry’s thigh, and it's so strange, the way it calms him down and makes his heart beat, all at the same time.

They talk, about the weather this summer in England, and about Harry's stepdads bakery, and that Louis should drop by sometime. Louis’ eyes crinkle when Harry says that, and he is so pretty. Harry tells him how to drive all the way home and Louis' hand stays on Harry’s thigh the whole five-minute ride.

“Um,” he says, “This is my house, right here.”, and Louis smiles, again, and how can it always be so bright even though it’s quiet?

“I’ll come around, some day,” he says, and it’s so sharp, like a lightning down Harry’s spine.

(Even though later, it isn’t, isn’t supposed to be described as a lightning)

“Aright”, he just says, tries to not smile so big and maybe more, smolder, like his cousin does and get’s girls all over him, but he feels the red in his lips stretch so wide, because this is all so intoxicating.

He shuts the car door, waves, and Louis white car drives away, slurring a bit, and, well.

It’s all different from here.

 

 

///

 

 

The next time they meet is when Harry realizes just how much too slow he is for Louis.

Louis enters the bakery with the smell of smoke and citrus and saltwater. It’s strong, all in Harry’s face. (That’s the thing with Louis, he gets too close. Creeps up against Harry’s safe home and smatters against his windows like a rainstorm.

Louis' lips are chapped and it looks like there are small bags of soot under his eyes. Harry can’t help the thoughts that rush over him. _Are you okay? Where did you sleep?_

 

He shouldn’t, shouldn’t be this way because Louis’ older and he can handle, but. Harry has too much fondness in his hands.

“Hello,” he hears himself saying.

“Do you wanna come take a swim?” is all Louis says, and Harry knows two things. First, that this is the part of Louis’ eyes that are a mischievous turquoise. Second, that he is in love with this boy.

And it sounds terribly dramatic in his head, but it isn’t really. That’s the tragic thing about them; that they’re just two boys that have no idea what they’re doing.

 

The bakery is almost closing anyway, and Harry came out extra early this morning. (That’s the thing he keeps thinking of again, how the world shapes itself around them somehow, how they move towards each other without even trying.)

He slips into the cottage from the backdoor, heart beating in his chest hard - he feels like a deer running from a fox, and he _is_ \- and tells his mother that he’ll close up the bakery a bit early and head out to the beach in the lovely weather. She nods, and her hair looks like a frizzy halo and Harry loves his mother so much.

Louis smoking a cigarette just outside the glass door when Harry comes into the bakery, and he realizes that somehow it’s the first time he’s seen Louis from such a distance, and he still glows so _bright._ It makes Harry think about those photographs that his mother always takes during christmas with their camera, how they after drying up a bit always look so warm yellow and sharp. And it’s like that with Louis, like, through a fricken glass door, he’s all sharp angles and sharp eyes and it’s like Harry can see every freckle on his nose.

 

(He writes about Louis’ freckles later in his poem, too. That they’re not like a constellation of stars -- not that cliché. More like a couple of moons and planets making a solar system of his face. Harry likes that comparison, because that’s how big Louis is, somehow. He’s a solar system and a universe and far too much.)

 

He walks outside, and Louis smiles a twisted smile through the cigarette. Harry wants to breath him in, suck in everything from Louis lungs, take the smoke from him. He coughs. Smooth.

“Good to see you, Harry.”

“Good to see you too.” Harry smiles, and it’s so easy to talk to Louis.

Louis stomps on his cigarette that didn’t really burn all the way down, and Harry thinks that Louis is a bit messy with things like that.

They ride in Louis’ car to a beach further away from the one they were the first night a couple of days ago.

Louis sings along loudly to the record in the radio, some Beatles song.

Harry hums, and he finds it sort of hard to do anything else, because again Louis is so big. And Louis’s quite _small,_ even though Harry still is a bit taller than Louis, but he’s _big_ , the way it seems like every atom of air in the car pays attention to just Louis.

“Do you think we’ve met before friday night?” Louis says, looking away from the road, towards Harry. His eyes are sparkling. His hand is not on Harry’s thigh today.

“No.” Harry is sure of this.

“It’s weird though, since I’m friends with your cousin, and Gemma too.”

“You know Gemma?” Harry asks.

“Yeah. She’s also fit.” Louis says, looking at the road now. His face is relaxed, but there is gold tingling under his skin.

Harry spends the rest of the car ride quiet, thinking about the way Louis said “also” as in. Well. Him being fit, maybe?

He’s still so naive.

 

The beach Louis slowly drives up on is empty, and very beautiful. The color of the sand is the same tone as Louis’ skin, (Harry wonders if that’s why he likes this beach, so he can blend in, but figures it's not, because Louis is not one to fade) and the color of the water the same as Louis eyes when they’re that cold blue. The kind of blue they are when he just asks someone to take a swim before saying hi.

Harry almost tells Louis then, that he sees him everywhere; in the sand, in the sea, in the wind. He wants to ask Louis if he sees Harry’s eyes in the green woods and his brown hair in the dirt under his nails.

He doesn’t, though, as they walk down the windy beach.

Louis strips of his white flannel first, and gives Harry a smile that says _here I am_ and _come and get me_. Harry doesn’t know how, just takes off his own shirt and his manchester trousers and his worn leather shoes him and Louis talked about that other night.

Louis is beautiful in just his boxer shorts. Harry tries not to stare, but it probably looks like he does, because he has those doe green eyes that burrow into your soul, his mother has told him.

“You have very green eyes.” Louis says, and Harry stares more.

“You have a softer blue color in your eyes when you talk about your sister.” Harry blurts out, and he’s not drunk. (There’s still that orange feeing in his stomach, though) he could have maybe stuck to just ‘blue’.

Louis laughs. (honest, honest, honest, raw, raw, raw, yellow, yellow, yellow.)

They go into the water then, and the waves tug on Louis’ legs and hips as if they want a piece of him. Everything seems to.

“Come on!” Louis shouts from out where he’s standing, water just up to where the dimples in his back buck in. Harry wants to include them in the poem he’s going to write about Louis, but he doesn’t want to say anything that has already been said about sleeping or swimming in back dimples, so he runs through the water instead, up to next Louis and it feels like they are kings.

“It feels like we’re kings!” he shouts, out to the waves, and to the sun, and the clouds.

Louis laughs loudly at that, splashes water on Harry, and ruffles his hair. Harry melts into the touch, because it feels quite magic and Harry has never been able to stay away from shiny things. Before he knows it though, Louis has dived into the water and left Harry feeling like someone has scooped out half of his body like in one of those abstract paintings.

 

He dives in after Louis into the water, and it surrounds him, hitting every pore of his skin, and he does really love the sea, he does.

 

They’re lying in the beach later, water drops running races down their bodies, muscles shining in the sun.

“I love the sea.” Harry breathes.

“Me too.” Louis says, and it’s like the universe stops for a second then for Louis to sort his thoughts out, before he talks. "It’s nice; I always think about that the world is 60% water, right? And us humans are too. We’re made out of the same things as the earth.”

“Yeah, that is worth thinking about,” Harry smiles.

 

“Do you ever write, Louis?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Mhmm,” Harry says, and he’s not embarrassed. Hell, here he is lying almost naked on a beach next to a boy he might be in love with but has only met twice, and of course he isn’t embarrassed of writing poetry.

“Is this our thing, now?” Louis asks then, “-Lying on the beach?”, and it feels a bit like he’s asking everything here. Saying to the sea _is it okay that we’re playing out our film here?_ Saying to the wind, _is it okay that you’re our soundtrack?_

Harry says “Yeah, maybe.”

“I’ll take you home to my house, next time.” Louis promises.

 

(And that’s the thing he does, Louis. He plants these small little seeds in Harry’s skin and he waters, but then, when it begins to grow, he can’t be bothered to take care of his garden.)

 

 

///

 

 

The next time Louis’ white car drives up onto the road in front of Harry’s house is during Sunday dinner with his relatives.

He sees the car pull up from the back of his eye, and when the door bell rings, he makes sure he’s the one to open. Louis is in _blue jeans_ , rolled up to expose his tanned ankles, and he is so beautiful.

“Hi” he says, and Louis smiles at him, eyes a bit narrow. Harry wonders which part of the blue in his eyes this is.

“So,” Harry says, just as Louis blurts out; “Come over to my place.”

And this is the moment where Harry gives himself completely to the boy with the laugh that feels like golden coins.

“Okay” he says quietly, and then he just steps out of the door, foolishly lets himself be dragged into a warm hug.

“There we go.” Louis says into his neck, and then they rip apart, hurry down to the car and drive way, all before Harry’s mother has time to notice.

 

"Have you ever kissed a boy?" Louis says casually as they’re driving down the sandy road with the radio on. The car smells more of smoke today; Louis probably took a cigarette right before. Harry wonders if he was nervous.

“No.” He croaks out, because the universe doesn’t just wait for him to breathe the way it waits for Louis.

"Y'know. Sometimes I think your lips are made of roses." Harry looks at Louis, and it almost hurts. It's like facing a ball of sun.

"Sometimes I think your laugh is made of golden coins," he replies, voice shaky.

He doesn’t know why he keeps admitting these things, its mybe for being fair. Although it doesn’t make sense, because Louis is definitely not being fair.

Louis laughs at that, and. Well. Again there are golden coins; clirring in Harry’s lungs.

 

That’s when Harry notices the blood on Louis’ knuckles resting on the steering wheel.

“Louis,” he gasps, a bit too dramatically, “-Are you hurt?”

The words pop up in his head again; _Sorry about the blood, I wish it was mine._

“I’m fine.” Louis says, and he smiles, like a fox, sharp, dangerous.

Harry doesn’t say anything then, because Louis pulls the car over, and parks it in the grass on the side of the road. Then he leans in, presses his small mouth on Harry’s, and it doesn’t taste like metallic, like gold, as Harry thought. More like peach.

Louis pulls away then, and it was just a short kiss, but Harry is having trouble breathing.

(This is the part where Louis puts the sword to Harry’s throat and holds still)

 

Louis’ house is not far from the small village Harry’s family lives in. It’s big and brown and empty, when he leads Harry through the echoing hall.

“You’ve got a nice house.” he says, and Louis beams, even in the dark.

“Thanks.”

He turns on the light switch somewhere on the wall behind Harry, and the room lightens up.

They’re in the kitchen, and Louis struts over and opens a small door, “Would you like something to drink?”

“Yeah, sure,” Harry breathes. He keeps thinking of Louis’ golden body and the kiss.

He doesn’t know how to describe it properly, in his poem.

Louis pushes a bottle of beer in his hand, just like the first time they met, and smirks.

“Doesn’t anybody live here with you? Your family?”

Harry can’t help his curiosity. (Deathtrap, deathtrap, deathtrap.)

“Just my grandma. But she’s asleep.”

Harry lets out a little sigh.

“Do you want to see my garden?” Louis asks and. Of course.

“Of course,” Harry says. “I love flowers.”

Louis smiles and Harry wonders if Louis is too thinking, about the way he compared Harry’s lips to roses before, in the car.

Louis smiles a lot, Harry thinks, and maybe that’s because of all of the mouths Louis’ kissed, that he’s so happy all the time. He doesn’t want to think of the people Louis has kissed before him though, really, and he follows Louis out into the garden.

It’s big, green, even though the light is a bit dim since it’s almost eight o'clock.

There are summer flowers flowing out from the soil beds, in all kinds of colors, and Harry wants to take his mothers polaroid camera and photograph it all, because Louis blends in here, so much better than down on his beach.

Here, Harry thinks, is the _proud blue_ in Louis' eyes.

“You can pick some flowers, if you want.” Louis says, probably noticing the way Harry’s eyes are trying to drag it all in.

“Okay.” he says, and walks out into the garden further. The wet grass sips into the holes in his brown leather boots and his toes curl at the cold, but it’s so very nice here.

 

Louis comes back as Harry has picked a bouquet of flowers, twisted of the roots so that the very bottom is still firmly on the ground, but the beautiful flowers ripped away.

(He doesn’t realize until far later that the same thing is happening to himself, this very moment.)

Louis has got a blue blanket with him that he splays out on the ground and he tells Harry to sit.

The blanket smells like old and like soot, and Harry wonders if this is a bit special for Louis, too. He can’t know for sure, though, because Louis is far too quick.

They lie on their backs on the blue quilt, in Louis’ green garden, and Harry has spilled some beer on his chin that Louis licked up. Yes, he licked it right up. Harry’s heart was beating very hard in his chest, like the hooves of a deer galloping against his ribs.

(Maybe he should add that in his poem, it did sound dramatic and not too terribly cliché either.)

Harry licked on Louis’ skin too, or sucked rather, on his neck, the part where it almost meets his shoulder and that he has laughed into a couple of times. It tasted like tobacco and salt and peaches, and Harry makes himself humm into Louis’ hair; “Why do you taste like peach?”

“It’s because.” Louis sighs, and his cheeks are pink. (Harry’s are red) “-I’ve got this place, see, it’s a hill, right above where we swam in the sea. It’s a great place, to write poems and drink wine and look at the stars.”

“That sounds nice.” Harry mumbles.

“Yeah. There’s a tree full of peaches there too, that wich like eating.”

“Is it your tree?”

“No.” Louis says, and pats Harry’s head fondly. “-The only thing that’s really mine is me.”

  
_No,_ Harry wants to say, _no, I’m yours too,_ but he won’t.

He hopes that maybe they’ll be seated down on the beach Louis likes so much some day, and it’ll be extra windy, and he’ll be thinking about how lovely Louis is, and his thoughts will travel right through the air, with the cold breeze, into Louis’ ear and then he will know too, how Harry has felt.

 

 

///

 

 

They fall asleep like that, out on the blue blanket in Louis’ garden; Harry snuggled up against the other boy’s chest.

The rain stars pouring over them as the sky is just turning from pink to orange -it’s quite spectacular actually- and Harry stops for a moment to just look, before Louis pulls him inside, already soaked.

Harry’s teeth are rattling, and his breath tastes like poison, (he’ll never taste ashes again in the mornings, just poison) but they’re laughing, loud and well, into each other’s cheeks, and Harry is so completely happy.

Louis takes Harry upstairs, up a long creaky staircase, to his room. The air in here seems so stand still, and it’s a bit smoky and hazy and the sun, now orange, is slipping through his dusty curtains. Dirt, dust, seems to be flying around so you can see each atom in the room, and it’s nice.

Louis pulls off his clothes until he’s completely naked in front of Harry, and at first he thinks Louis wants to, well, do it, because he touches Harry’s face with a hand that is far too cold and too hot, but then he pulls away and turns to the closet, to rattle out some warm clothes. Louis has a nice bum, Harry thinks, tries cursing himself, but. He’s already here, somehow, ran away from Sunday dinner, he might as well look at Louis’ tanned, wet bottom.

He steps out of his own soaked clothes too, and when Louis is dressed and has taken a moment to look at Harry’s naked body, he mumbles “I’ll go down and make breakfast, help yourself.”

Louis disappears down the staircase and Harry suddenly feels cold, standing here full on naked in Louis’ quiet room, even though his cheeks are flushed blood red.

He borrows clothes, pulls them on slowly, breathing in the air of the room as if he wants to savor it in his lungs forever. (He should know that there’s nothing called forever.)

There’s a little brown book on Louis’ drawer, and he figures it’s his journal.

Harry knows he shouldn’t, but.

This is the key to the greatest secret of all, and how can he throw the key away?

 

———-

You are cold

and short

like a February

winter

 

you breathe hot

heavy air

in to the

curve of my neck

 

and whisper

”I could die

Happy right now”

 

My heart leaps

Out of my chest

And silently beats

”Me too”

———-

 

Harry puts down the book, heart beating fast the way it seems to have been doing ever since he met Louis a -- what, week ago now? It feels like more.

He walks slowly down the stairs, feeling the soft fabric of Louis' tobacco and salt-smelling clothes on his skin. There’s some other smell too, something sweeter.

 

He finds his way to the kitchen, where Louis is sitting around the wooden table, sipping on his tea. He looks so normal, so quiet, like this, almost a bit broken. And Harry feels a bit broken too, and he's so young, thinking things are easier together.

(It’s never easier.)

“There’s a cup for you,” Louis says, not looking up from the newspaper. He nods towards the bench, where, matter-of-factly, there is a small cup standing and waiting for Harry.

“Didn’t know if you liked milk in yours or not.” Louis purrs, and it's all fox, fox, fox, blue, blue, blue, and fire, orange, gold.

“I do.” Harry smiles, and slowly pours the white thick milk into his cup. He likes the way it rolls into the black tea, fiercely evolving like a thundercloud, until taking over the cup completely.

Outside the window an old woman is sitting in the garden on an old chair.

Louis’ grandma, he figures.

 

(Harry’s going to blow up like a bomb, a bomb of poetry scattered into the sky and of sand and fuzzy purple wine, and it’s going to be glorious.)

 

 

///

 

 

If those first three meetings were rainstorms, the rest of the summer just floats away like a tsunami rolling over a whole city. Everything Harry is and does gets flushed along somehow, gets ripped off, and that’s why they’re toxic together. He likes to think that he rips off parts of Louis too, but he doesn’t. Yeah, sure, he has bits of Louis in him; the other boy's back muscles tucked in between the nerves in his fingers, his smile burrowed in the crook of his neck.

But he can’t burn Louis out of him, can’t taste soot anymore. (Louis is poison)

It’s strange (and unsmart) the way they’re suddenly spending almost each day with each other.

It’s strange too, the fact that Harry’s mother is barely angry when he comes home sometimes not until the mornings, and the way his sister never tells on him when she hears him sneak in through the bakery late at night. She just looks up at him through her long lashes, eyes saying who is she?

They all want to know that, who she is. It’s all Niall goes on about, _how big are her tits? You can at least tell me that._

Harry blushes, always, and they all coo and ‘aww’ over him, but all he’s thinking of is the way Louis whispered the word _sugar_ into his back yesterday when he was scribbling sentences from his favorite poems onto the skin on Harry’s arm, with the end of his faded cigarette.

It didn’t burn.

 

They lie on the hill a lot, and do that. On Louis’ hill, that isn’t really his hill -- the way his beach isn’t really his beach and his golden watch not really his golden watch.

(The way Louis isn’t really Harry’s)

The first day Louis took him there, was a yellow afternoon when the grass was warm and dry, and the peaches weren’t really ripe enough; some green-lime color that suited Louis’ tanned skin wonderfully.

Harry ate so many that his stomach stood out, and they joked about him being pregnant. He puked them all up later, right among the peach cores they’d spitted out behind the tree. It still felt like a weight in his stomach, but Harry is quite certain by now that that feeling is just Louis.

 

Louis was right, about the hill being a nice place to watch the stars from. They twinkle, and Harry swears it makes Louis’ eyes an icy blue that just comes from beautiful things like flowers and stars and beaches.

 

Louis’ skin tastes like tobacco some days more than others. It’s always the same days that his shoulders tense, and Harry murmurs into the muscle where his shoulder meets his neck, _Why? What are you worried about?_ But Louis just shrugs, and it’s a subtle way of shaking Harry off of his body.

 

Louis says a lot of beautiful things. One day, when it’s early in the morning and the sky is light, light blue, he tells Harry a story, while traveling his fingertips up and down Harry’s nose, about a girl and a boy who got lost in the woods.

It’s a sad story; it ends with the boy dying and the girl making it out, but always tasting death on her tongue from how they were starving in there, and Harry wakes up one morning crying, because he dreamt it was him and Louis.

He does believe Louis loves him, he really does, the moments when he kisses him so softly, and when Harry can count the sharp teeth in Louis’ mouth with his tongue without getting cut. He really does, when Louis laughs into his cheek, and takes him to that chocolate factory he told Louis one drunken night was the best.

 

Louis falls one day, down on the beach, over a dead tree, and cuts open his foot.

Harry says they have to go to the hospital, but Louis says "No, no," and just sits on the beach until he feels better, muttering something about how ironic it is, how sad, to trip and hurt yourself on something that is already dead.

(Maybe that’s the moment Louis decides.)

 

 

///

 

 

Harry’s likes the mornings the most. He loves waking up before Louis, because he almost always does; counts Louis’ freckles and scribbles down words about them in his little black journal he always has slipping around in his trouser pocket.

 

He’s made a list of the things about Louis that are the most beautiful.

 

(1. His golden skin.

 

2\. The sharp tip of his nose that scrunches up when he laughs.

 

3\. The dark crinkles under his eyes that Louis hates so much himself.

 

4\. His soft stomach.

 

5\. The strands of hair that always seem to be messy in the back of his neck.

 

6\. His fingernails, bitten down to let his soft fingertips breathe.)

 

The only time he writes something proper, a real story, is about the first time Louis makes love to Harry.

It’s up in Louis’ dusty room, with the sun slipping through the curtains _gold, gold, gold._

Harry’s so nervous, bites his tongue, and tastes coins.

“Are you alright, love?” Louis says between heartbeats, and. Of course he is.

“Of course I am.”

Harry beams.

His body is splayed out on the bed for Louis and this is what he wants, wants Louis to look at him as if he’s a silver statue, wants so badly for Louis to love every piece of baby fat he is and every curly hair and his scared, green, doe eyes.

 

  
_Bambi_ , Louis calls him, and Harry doesn’t call Louis _Fox,_ just breathes heavily and thinks of how nice it is to be a planet in the solar system that circles around the mighty sun.

(Louis is the sun, of course, and he hopes he is mercury because he’s learned in school that that’s the closest planet.)

It’s beautiful, and Harry’s so glad Louis is his first time. For the first time the atoms in the room seem to surround, to please -- _them_ , not just Louis.

They mold together and Harry feels a little bit golden, too.

Just for today, but he does.

 

 

Louis likes the time they spend at the beach the most, he says. Harry tells him that he blends in better in the garden than in the sand, but it’s not the sand, that Louis loves.

It’s the ocean, (the way humans are 60% ocean, just like the earth, remember?),

 

And Harry sort of understands, he does, when they swim in the sea and the waves stand up and hug Louis as if he was the one responsible for keeping them blue.

Harry is sure, then and there, that the waves attacking Louis are trying to make him jealous, are saying _look, I’m closer._

(He knows later, that they were just trying to warn Harry

off, trying to make him run while he still he could.)

Harry hugs Louis from behind, mumbles “No, I’m the closest,” but Louis is too busy watching the deep, dark sea and he can’t hear.

 

Poor waves, just trying to teach him the way you should not love someone whose hips bruise as easily as Louis’ does and who wears a cigarette tucked in behind his ear as if not even the sea could stop his addiction from burning things down.

(And, well. Harry doesn’t see it, how Louis likes the way the ashes fall from the tip too much and how stupid he is himself, getting jealous of saltwater waves.)

 

 

///

 

 

“What are you thinking about, really?” Harry says, and takes a bite from the peach.

Louis looks up at him. His cheeks look stray with the stubble.

“Did you know that in the bible, peach is the forbidden fruit?”

“Yeah, I know.” Harry says, smiles, because Louis’ mind is so beautiful, and he loves the feel of him locking up another door.

“I’m gonna write a book, some day.” Louis says.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Louis breathes, and Harry wonders why his shoulder tensed at that. He isn’t usually the kind of person to notice these things, always too caught up in his own little cloud, but. He isn’t usually sitting on a beach with a boy made of gold either, so.

“What about?”

“I don’t know. Life.”

Harry smiles and Louis smiles and he presses his peach-sticky lips to Louis’ and counts all of the teeth.

Maybe the beach is Harry’s favorite place to be, too.

 

Louis has bought a camera one day. At least that’s what he tells Harry, as they fly down the dusty road, away from Harry’s stepfather’s bakery.

“I’m gonna photograph you, Harry, so I can remember.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Harry says softly. (He’s missing the point, though.)

 

They go to their hill, that isn’t really theirs, and Louis takes photographs of Harry, meanwhile he reads poetry. Louis says that’s when he’s the most beautiful. In the middle of it all, an old man comes running, screaming and shouting at them to get of his property, and, Louis was right about the hill not being his.

Harry sucks the words right in, and laughing they run down through the wet grass, almost stumbling, and barely able to breathe, until they’re hidden in under a cliff, and the old man quietens.

“Those were his peaches.” Harry giggles into Louis’ sweaty forehead.

“Yeah,” He laughs, (and it's all golden coins, the color orange, and fox sharp.)

 

They spend the rest of the day in the august warmth, playing around the rocks around the water, Louis’ camera safely seated on dry land.

When they get tired, they lay down in the wet sand that soaks their already dirty clothes, and they breathe.

Harry’s stomach is so full, and he’s gotten fully used to this strange peach-diet somehow.

It’s not the only thing they eat, sometimes Louis has sandwiches in the car when he picks Harry up, and Harry cooks eggs sometimes when it rains and they sit inside all day and play cards with Louis’ grandma.

Her name is Elle and she tells Harry stories about her childhood, even though he much more wants to know about Louis'.

 

He’s still sort of convinced, that everything they’ve been doing in their lives has been leading up to this, to them meeting and to this summer, and it’s like that, when you meet your soulmate.

He thinks that, if you’re sixteen when you do, then that’s so.

 

"Your hair is getting long." Louis states, when there’s a thunderstorm out and its night and they’re sat out in the bakery, nibbling on bread that’s still a bit warm from this afternoon, and passing a bottle of red wine between them. Harry has stopped wondering where Louis gets this stuff from.

“-- I like it though,” he adds, and Harry knows he’s been quiet for too long.

“Thank you,” he says, smiles at Louis through the dark. “I like your hair, too.”

“mhmm.” Louis takes a sip of the wine. Harry envy’s it, squealping around in Louis' mouth, tiny. He’s a bit drunk.

“I used to wonder,” he starts, —and this isn’t anything different from what they usually say to each other, but the deer in his chest is galloping against his ribs.— “if you thought about my hair when you saw the dirt under your fingernails. If you thought about my eyes when you saw the woods.”

Louis exhales besides him.

 

“Harry,". (This Harry will not forget for a long long time.) "I thought about you when I saw the sand fall out of my trousers the first night we had been at the beach.

I thought of you, when I drank my tea and when I wrote my poems and when I was taking baths.

I have thought of you once for every peach core on our hill.

I have been thinking about kissing you every day, all the time. I have been thinking about fucking you when I sleep, every night.

When the apocalypse comes, I will be thinking of you with every crack of the earth’s skin. Through every scream, I will search for you.”

Harry takes the bottle of red wine, and drowns it all down, before he kisses every part of Louis’ skin. Maybe now, he’s starting to see it coming, and he wants to savor everything Louis is, make sure that he is real. He tastes like sweat and salt and alcohol and smoke and something else, something sweeter.

 

 

///

 

 

Harry’s mother talks to him about love, sometimes, when she gets to sit on the end of his bed, and when her hair is combed backwards and not yet the brown halo around her face.

She doesn’t tell him about the way it’s not so smart to jump off into someone like you’re jumping of a fucking cliff. She doesn’t tell him that just because there’s some boy shouting from underneath the cliff _, jump, I’m here,_ he’s not strong enough to save the fall, when you finally drop. She doesn’t tell him about the way you might both die in the fall.

 

 

///

 

 

Louis picks him up in his car outside the bakery, the 16th of August. Harry knows this because he writes the date in his diary, on the page after the one with the photograph of Louis on his hill. He writes that this is the date, that Louis’ eyes turn the sad sad sad shade of blue.

He doesn’t know why yet. All he did was tell Louis that he looked smart in his white turtle neck. That he looked like a _writer._

 

They spend the day picking flowers in Louis’ garden.

“It’s sad, the way you pull off the pretty part of the plant, and leaves the rest hurting, y’know?” Harry says.

Louis doesn’t laugh, and Harry can't remember if he meant it as a joke or not.

He just smiles tiredly, silently at Harry, his beautiful, stray, soft smile, and then he says quietly: "Like this,-” he shoves around in the soil with his small tanned hands, “-it can grow again, grow a new flower.”

Harry smiles too, because, yeah, that makes sense.

 

Later that night, before he goes home, Harry claws at Louis' cheeks with raw hands, desperately, and when he kisses him back the same way, Harry's almost expecting what happens next,

 

With them, with him, with this.

 

 

///

 

 

The last part of Harry’s love story is sad. It’s not golden, it's rotten, and it’s green the way a bronze statue gets after years of standing in the rain.

When Louis doesn't come pick him up in his dirty white car for a whole week, he can't help the ache. The deer behind his ribs is aching.

 

School starts and his mother sets up these rules again. He tells himself that Louis will come back, that he's just helping his grandmother or finally studying or that he's simply tired. But they did that together, and Harry doesn't want to wonder if there is someone else’s mouth Louis is kissing, and one day after school he pulls on his brown boots that have almost fallen apart completely now, and he starts walking. He walks out of the village, and he's being so dramatic, hearing sad songs in the whistle of the wind in the trees. Emptiness is almost never dramatic, though. Just sad, strange, and metallic.  

Louis' house is empty. The door is unlocked, as always, but Louis is nowhere to be found and neither is his grandmother, and all Harry finds is a letter saying "I’m sorry" on the envelope.

 

He sinks to the ground, legs not holding him up properly. And then he sees it, sees it all, the sadness in Louis' eyes when he told him he looked like a writer, the way he wanted a photograph so he could remember, and he understands.

  bomb who has just exploded and he tries finding comfort in the letter and moving on, but his tongue tastes like poison and he can't hear any coins in his chest, and every time he tries to plant a new flower (let it grow again, like Louis said), all he finds is peach cores in the way.

 

 

///

 

_Dear Harry,_

_If you think of it all this way, then it’s like neither of us did anything wrong._

_You just found me in the wrong universe. That’s all. This is, as they say, the darkest timeline. Everywhere else, nay, “everywhen” else— us in the Civil War, us in Ancient Egypt, us in the swinging ’60s— we are happy._

_If this theory holds, well, by the law of averages, there had to be one universe— just this one— where we don’t end up together. Here and now just happens to be it. If you think of it this way, nothing is our fault._

_So see, that explains everything. We’re not together anymore because of the multiverse._

_Well, isn’t that comforting?_

_If you’re sad, do like I do and just think of the other ‘verses. The ones where I believe in love and where I don’t hate myself and where I never feel the need to kamikaze relationships. A universe where we can have nice things. It’s helpful, right?_

_Because you could have loved me forever. And maybe in another universe, I let you._

**Author's Note:**

> im actually so sorry for the ending im sorry


End file.
